Greeley City Council denies help to Salida del Sol for impact fees

Tristan Hamilton works to pack down the dirt inside one of the foundations Wednesday morning at the Salida Del Sol construction site in Greeley. The school will be teaching students from across Weld County.

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Salida del Sol, soon to be the first dual language academy of its kind in the area, won’t get any handouts from the city of Greeley.

Members of the school’s board of directors on Tuesday asked the Greeley City Council to reimburse them for some fees associated with constructing the new school on the east side of U.S. 85, saying they don’t believe they had a legal obligation to pay the fees in the first place. They argued council members should show their support for the public charter school’s unique educational offering by paying the fees on their behalf.

Council members soundly rejected the proposal in a unanimous vote, saying they have never paid development fees for construction of a school and didn’t wish to establish a precedent.

Council Member Charles Archibeque was absent from the meeting, and Council Member Robb Casseday recused himself because of personal relationships with those on the school’s board.

Salida del Sol in mid-March submitted a $258,000 “protest payment” to Greeley for impact fees, noting the only reason the school submitted the payment was to avoid “drastic penalties.”

On Tuesday, Brett Payton, the school’s attorney, asked for a $134,792 reimbursement for transportation and fire impact fees.

Salida del Sol will already pay $450,000 to construct a required road that connects traffic to the school and adjacent neighborhoods from its location at 111 26th St., he said, and a $28,000 fire impact fee for a structure less than a mile from the nearest fire station is “exorbitant.”

“Burdening a school that provides education services to the community, and thus long-term economic benefits to the city as a whole, with $556,544 in traffic-related costs sends entirely the wrong message to the community,” Payton wrote in a six-page letter accompanying the protest payment.

Payton also questioned the legal authority of the city to charge a school for development impact fees. When the city’s impact fee ordinance was adopted, he argued the intent was to leave out new schools.

Because schools are not explicitly mentioned in the ordinance, Payton said court precedence shows the city is unlawfully adding that requirement.

Greeley officials, however, said that court precedent deals with taxation cases and is irrelevant to impact fees. Schools are not exempt from the fees, and Greeley has never waived or subsidized development fees for any school to date, they said.

Payton and the Salida board of directors asked council members to consider employing a city ordinance that gives them prerogative to pay development fees on behalf of an applicant if it matches their goals and objectives.

While council members say they support the dual language school, which will open to 600 students from kindergarten through eighth grades in September, they said paying the development fees would result in an unfair tax burden on city residents.

Impact fees, which are charged for new developments to ensure the city can provide things like infrastructure and public safety to those new areas, must be “whole,” meaning the city would have to take money from a different fund to reimburse Salida del Sol, said Assistant City Manager Becky Safarik.

Council Member Sandi Elder said that means council members should look at the bigger picture.

“If I am not going to send my child to that school, I have to make up the taxes to pay for those impact fees,” she said.

Safarik said Union Colony Elementary School and Prairie Heights Middle School, both recent projects, were required to pay similar impact fees.

Payton said Salida del Sol also wrestled with budgeting for impact fees because it wasn’t readily clear what the city would charge.

But Safarik said the city’s development code and fee schedule are all online, and staff has a history of working with applicants in the early stages of development to help them budget for construction.

Payton argued council members will not be bound by precedent, because in reality there is no legal administrative precedent.

But council members disagreed.

“The parallel would be that I would put a fence around my house because I think it would benefit me. … And after the fence has gone up, I see my neighbors are enjoying this fence, too. So I say, ‘How about you kick in some money because you are benefitting, too?’ ” said Council Member Mike Finn.

“The parallel would be that I would put up a fence around my house because I think it would benefit me. ... And after the fence has gone up, I see my neighbors are enjoying this fence, too. So I say, ‘How about you kick in some money because you are benefitting too?’ — Mike Finn, Greeley City Council member